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“For some interminable seconds this unholy figure stood in dreadful silence, apparently delighting in the discomfort her appearance had effected, and, then, suddenly shouldering her spade, she moved away with a kind of gliding motion, turning round every now and again to cast the same rancorous look at me, until she came to the hedge that separated the garden from a long disused stone quarry, when she seemed instantly to fade away in the now twilight, and disappear.”

I think that I am not far wrong when I say that nearly everybody, even in these later days, believes in the supernatural. There is something akin to the Unseen in ourselves, in our thoughts, in our inner consciousness, which Nature will not allow us to entirely ignore. With some the supernatural takes the form of luck, of a blind belief in Fate, while the particular brand of others is ghosts pure and simple. Between those two, luck and ghosts, there is a wide range of speculation and assertion.

Without doubt, the supernatural exists to a large extent in the imagination. I do not say that it exists only or entirely in the imagination, but I do affirm that the imagination has a great influence upon the existence of the supernatural. A highly strung, nervous, imaginative temperament is more susceptible to, and receptive of the supernatural; it is what I may term a good medium; it catches and retains a sensation without attempting or wishing to analyse the wherefore or the wherefrom. In the Irish this temperament is more fully developed than in any other people. Their fancy has led their belief, or rather their power of reception, to concentrate in one particular form, namely, the Banshee.

A few years ago I should have laughed to scorn anyone who dared predict that I should ever make such a statement, but now it is my firm and unalterable belief that the Banshee is a reality. There is not a shadow of doubt in my mind as to its actual existence. I am an Englishman not an Irishman; I am not superstitious, and I certainly do not believe in ghosts, for I have never seen or in any way come in contact with one. Why this impression should have gained such a hold upon me I am entirely without explanation! Continue reading →